On July 29, 2014, Garland voters passed a Land Use Ordinance regulating any proposed Communication, Utility, Transportation (CUT) corridor with strict guidelines making it very difficult for such a project to go through the town.
(See Land-use Ordinances page)

In voting on Tuesday, June 10, 2014, Dover-Foxcroft passed a moratorium on any new construction or use requiring approval under the terms of the Town's zoning and land use ordinances and regulations. This moratorium was enacted specifically to include private paved highways, pipeline, and high-tension transmission lines as proposed for the East-West Corridor.

The Maine Small Business Coalition, representing more than 3,400 small businesses in Maine, has announced its opposition to construction of the East-West Corridor: See MSBC Resolution

Maine citizens from all over the State came together to form Stop the East-West Corridor in early 2012. They are concerned about the proposal to build an East-West Transportation, Communications, and Utilities Corridor across Maine. As proposed, the Corridor would seriously affect many communities and businesses all across the state and would irrevocably change its rural nature.

Peter Vigue, CEO of Cianbro Corporation, proposes building a 500- to 2000-foot-wide fenced swath that would bisect Maine from border to border--from Coburn Gore to Calais. For now, the proposal includes a private, gated toll highway to accommodate high-speed truck traffic along that swath; Vigue is vague about whether it would, as expected, eventually incorporate pipelines in addition to truck traffic to transport oil and natural gas from Alberta and fracking fields in Quebec and New Brunswick or other natural resources from Maine. This could be the largest development project that the State of Maine has ever seen. [more about the corridor]

We are opposed to this corridor for many reasons. While it may benefit Canadian and a few Maine corporate interests, it does not offer economic benefit to Maine citizens, and it will seriously degrade quality of life and environmental conditions for people and wildlife alike, robbing the State of features valuable to tourism.

Cianbro's project promoter Darryl Brown tells audiences his route planners are trying to avoid conservation land, wetlands, vernal pools, and designated wildlife management areas as much as possible, but common sense tells us that highways built for high-speed heavyweight tandem-truck traffic cannot weave around every environmentally sensitive feature along the way. Instead, wetlands would be filled in; ramps, roadbeds, and bridge abutments would be built up; asphalt would be mixed; interchanges and service facilities would be developed. Where would all that sand and gravel come from? How much of Maine's uniquely well-preserved glacial landscape would be scraped up and used to build the highway? What about the aquifers under the gravel, the streamsheds, lakes, and ponds fed by them? What will happen to the cold-water fisheries? What besides Asian commodities and Canadian products will trucks be carrying? Accidents involving heavy trucks have heavy consequences. What about chemical and fuel spills, de-icing and runoff? The environmental impacts could be disastrous and very expensive if not impossible to clean up, affecting the whole region downstream to the coast.

We are not opposed to road development and other improvements that would better connect Maine with Canada and with markets in the U.S. But such a sensitively routed, state-of-the-art highway as proposed would be expensive to build---over four times the cost of improving east-west rail lines between Montreal and eastern Canada, as estimated by the Sierra Club. Rail transport is exponentially safer than truck transport, with far less environmental impact. Many people ask, why is rail not good enough to meet demand for faster east-west freight transport? Proponents of the Corridor say trucks do better at meeting global demand for just-in-time delivery. Or is there something else in the pipeline? Maine's existing east-west rail lines, running not far north of the proposed Corridor route, are already being used to transport crude oil from the Midwest and Alberta (including at least one test run of tar-sands oil) to the Irving refinery in St. John.

The proposed route aligns with convenient export of other natural resources in eastern and northern Maine, increasingly valuable in the global economy. Could the Corridor open the door to more wind farms and transmission lines? What about eastern Maine's abundant supply of fresh water, not just for human consumption but for gas fracking?

Cianbro is promoting the Corridor as a construction and economic development project; who are the investors? As some have asked, is it possible a swath across Maine might belong to someone from China? Cianbro representatives admit that foreign ownership is not only possible but likely.

What's happening now?

While Cianbro has been mute for some time now on the EWC and has stopped promoting the EWC as a highway, the threat continues in the form of an industrial pipeline / transmission corridor. As resources become more scarce and the global economy becomes less stable, the threat is likely to grow. The Penobscot River is now a pressure point of those favoring the EWC, and the State of Maine is increasing pressure with a challenge to the long-standing treaty with the Penobscot Nation that gives control over the River and islands in it to the Nation. The Penobscot Nation's legal battle over their River, as well as proposals to expand MEPCO transmission lines, are issues that STEWC is now focusing on.

Demonstrating that utility corridors are a real threat to private land-owners, a Pennsylvania maple-sugar farm recently lost to a corporation constructing the Constitution Pipeline which cut through its maple trees by eminent domain. (See Other Corridors.)

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We, the citizens of Maine, love the place we call home. Our sense of place is what defines us. When it's gone, it's gone forever.